The Week of November 10th, 2014

Care

1. Sterilization Deaths in India

A dozen women died last week after undergoing sterilization operations in Chhattisgarh state in India. Many more are in the hospital and some are in critical condition after the operations performed on Saturday by doctor R.K. Gupta, an experienced doctor who performed more than 80 sterilizations in 6 hours that day. This rate of performing surgery violates government regulation prohibiting surgeons from performing 30 operations a day. He has been arrested and accused of using rusty equipment and failing to observe basic hygiene in a dirty operating room.

This tragic occurrence reflects the dangers in the world's largest contraception program. Mass sterilizations are performed in "sterilization camps" where doctors perform operations quickly on many women a day, usually rural, poor, uneducated women. In this case, the women were enticed to undergo sterilization for a small payout of 1,400 rupees, or $23. Health workers also receive smaller payments for each person they bring in for sterilization. Officially, India's central government has ended the old quotas for sterilizing women. However, the practice continues virtually unchanged at the state level, and officials and doctors are rewarded for procedures performed.

2. Nuclear Reactors in Iran

Russia has announced an agreement with Iran to build two nuclear reactors inside Iran with Russian technology, with four more possible in the future. A head Iranian nuclear official says it is a “turning point” in their relations with Russia, and this has come about two weeks before a nuclear agreement must be made with the permanent members of UN security council and Germany. This is a new stage in Iran’s long and controversial mission of obtaining nuclear power, which the West sees as a veiled attempt to obtain nuclear weapons. Iran continues to insist the opposite, and has consented to the reactors being built under international supervision, while Russia claims it will handle the nuclear material so Iran has no possibility of making weapons from it.

This agreement is not surprising; Russia has consistently assisted nations like Iran and Syria, which are both enemies of the West with poor human rights records. Russia’s presence in Iran will almost certainly bolster their nuclear program, and since many in the West doubt the program’s intentions, it is certainly not good news for them. However, there is still no clear sign of an aggressive Iranian nuclear weapons program, so preemptive panic is unnecessary. What this deal does demonstrate is an increase in the concrete relationship between Iran and Russia, something the United States is not likely to approve of, considering its relationship with both countries. But it could also mean Iran could be willing to accept concessions on the program’s scope for fewer sanctions, something that would be beneficial to all parties involved.

3. Net Neutrality

The issue of net neutrality recently returned to the headlines after President Obama called on the FCC to reclassify broadband as a government regulated utility in order to ensure that all content on the Internet is treated equally.

Net neutrality means that government and internet service providers must treat the content on the Internet equally. This means companies that provide data online cannot be discriminated against or charged based on the content or size of data that they provide.

Tom Wheeler, the Obama-appointed chairman of the FCC, said he agreed with the president, adding that he believes “the Internet must remain an open platform for free expression, innovation, and economic growth.” Yet opposition for net neutrality is strong coming mainly from major corporations and Republican lawmakers. Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz on Monday called net neutrality “Obamacare for the Internet,” adding “the Internet should not operate at the speed of the government.”

Earlier this year Netflix reluctantly agreed to pay Comcast in order to maintain fast streaming speeds which Comcast wanted compensation for due to heavier traffic. If the FCC chooses to act as Obama advocates and reclassify consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, which gives the FCC full authority over Internet Service Providers, there is still the possibility that companies might have to pay for Internet priority.

4. Gun rights in California

November 11th, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied a motion to intervene from various gun control advocacy groups, allowing its previous ruling to stand. That ruling, issued in February of this year, invalidated the City of San Diego’s issuance of concealed carry licenses to only those who could prove “good cause.” Open carry is illegal in the city, so concealed carry is the only legal way to be armed in public.

Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, writing for the majority, reasoned that the words “keep and bear arms” in the U.S. Constitution protected an individual right not only to keep arms in the home, but also to carry them in public. O’Scannlain cited a massive historical record indicating that the word “bear,” in the early days of the Republic, was understood to include carrying guns outside the home. Because San Diego required anyone wanting to carry a weapon in public to prove “a set of circumstances that distinguish [him] from the mainstream,” the Ninth Circuit found that the license requirements were so difficult to meet that they effectively destroyed, rather than simply regulated, the Constitutional right to bear arms. Judge O’Scannlain also clarified that this decision does not mean that there exists a right to concealed carry, it simply means that, in general, individuals have a right to some sort of carry. This decision accompanied several other Appeals Court decisions this year that affirmed a right to carry guns in public.

These decisions relied on the Supreme Court’s rulings in Heller v. D.C. and McDonald v. Chicago, which interpreted the 2nd Amendment as an individual right. The ruling is a win for gun rights groups, but the door is still open for reasonable regulation of guns.

5. Comet Landing

European Space Agency scientists this past week have accomplished something fantastical and novel; they have managed to land a roving probe on the surface of a comet 310 million miles from the Earth. This has never been done before in human history. The project, which cost a hefty $1.75 billion dollars, has been 25 years in the making, ten of which were spent en route to the distant celestial body. The landing was not without difficulty; the harpoon-like devices designed to anchor the landing probe, Philae, to the surface of the duck-shaped comet did not operate properly and the rover had to bounce twice to land finally. Concerns are now being raised over the limited power that the rover has with which to conduct its experiments, namely measuring the physical and chemical characteristic of comet.

The project seeks to examine some of the basic features of comets that have always played a key role in scientists’ imaginings of the birth of the solar system. Several important theories about the origin of Earth feature comets prominently. One puts forth that water arrived on Earth via comet collision, while another hypothesizes the arrival of organic molecules or their building blocks in a similar fashion. Exploring the conditions on an actual comet will yield invaluable information about these possibilities, and will further our understanding of the formation of planetary bodies and, perhaps, even life itself.

Don’t Care

0. Overzealous Censorship

Political correctness has made a slow, creeping advance for much of modern memory, but its development has become especially evident this week. On November 9th, attorney and civil liberties activist Harvey Silverglate penned an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Liberals Are Killing the Liberal Arts,” which criticized the reactions of Smith College students and faculty to the use of various slurs during a discussion about freedom of speech. Although the words were used in an academic context and critically examined by the speaker, feminist and author Wendy Kaminer, she faced extreme backlash and was labeled as a racist and bigot. Careful editing of the transcript from the talk even resulted in this amusing line of text: “WK: And by, the c-word, you mean the word [c-word]?”

Words can be dangerous tools, although perhaps treating them as such can make them even more potent. Kaminer compared students identifying offensive words by their first letter to frightened Harry Potter characters referring to Voldemort as “He Who Cannot Be Named.”

In other contexts, writing off a word as annoying and useless may cause problems. Time Magazine has come under fire for including “feminist” in its annual poll of words to ban. Thanks to 4-chan users, “feminist” seems to be leading, ahead of words like “bae,” “kale,” and “literally.” Critics have responded that this dismissal of such an important issue is rooted to the heart of much modern opposition to feminism; the movement is seen as annoying or bossy instead of a legitimate attempt for equal rights. Perhaps language is best left alone to the natural evolution of our discourse.

Ryan McGinnis, Aaron Gordon, Luis Sanchez, Liam Conway-Pearson, Monika Hur and Sam Houskeeper contributed